
COMPELLED MEN 



V 



PATTEE 



J 




Glass 

Book 

Copyright N°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Compelled Men 



FRED LEWIS PATTEE 
u 

Professor of the English Language and Literature 

in the Pennsylvania State College 



'For the love of Christ constraineth us" 

— 2 Cor. 5: H 



New York: 124 East 28th Street 

London: 47 Paternoster Row, E. C» 

1913 



BV 454-1 
.Pa 



Copyright 1913, by 

The International Committee of 

Young- Men's Christian Associations 



\ 

©CI.A343636 



To the Students of the Pennsylvania 
State College, Before -Whom These Ad- 
dresses were First Delivered, This Little 
Book is Inscribed With the Love and the 
f Deepest Wishes of the Author. And to 
* Him Who Reads This Book, Whoever and 
* v Wherever He May Be, May the Love of 
k Jesus Christ Be a Constraining Power, 
Holding Him Fast. 



Compelled Men 



When Martin Luther at the crisis of 
his life burst out in agony of soul, "Here 
I stand. God help me. I cannot do other- 
wise/' he voiced a truth fundamental in 
human life : men at the crisis do always 
what they must. God help them, they 
can do nothing else. 

All me.n are compelled men. 

No truth that concerns humanity has 
been more widely discussed than this, and 
none has been more distorted into variant 
forms. At one extreme it becomes pure 
fatalism. Men are compelled by forces 
over which they have no control. What 
is to be will be : why struggle ? Men 
are footballs of the gods : 

" The Ball no question makes of Ayes or Noes, 

But Here or There as strikes the Player goes ; 

And He that toss'd you down into the Field, 

He knows about it all — He knows — He 

knows !" 



Compelled Men 

The idea permeated the whole litera- 
ture of Greece. It was the moving force 
of the Greek drama. Men did what the 
gods forced them to do, and as a 
result they disclaimed all responsibility. 
Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon and 
then proclaims her innocence. "Destiny 
did the deed, not I," she cries. Orestes, 
pursued by the Furies, maintains that 
not he but Fate was guilty. He could not 
ward off what the gods had in store. 
Under such a philosophy is it any wonder 
that the Greek conscience became atro- 
phied and the moral life low ? This same 
philosophy for ages has ruled the Orient. 
All of its weakness one can see in a single 
glance at the far East. It cuts the nerve 
of endeavor and man stagnates under it 
and rots. 

Then there is the phase of it that once 
thundered at every gate of the Christian 
Church. The great shibboleths of free 
will and predestination and fore ordina- 
tion rang out fiercely from the pulpits of 
our grandfathers; but what of them 
today ? They are bombs which have been 



Compelled Men 

rolled around until all the powder has 
trickled out, interesting relics from a bar- 
barous age never again to be vital. They 
belong to the domain of dialectics : it may 
strengthen the muscles of our intellects to 
toss them about, but they can save neither 
the souls nor the bodies of men. They 
are dead things. 

And yet a doctrine that for ages has 
held in its grip the whole East, that 
mother of religions, and that for cen- 
turies played such a part in the history 
of the Christian Church, cannot be lightly 
dismissed. As with most things that men 
have believed, there is truth in it. The 
doctrine of Kismet is founded on a half- 
truth. Both Calvinist and Arminian 
were right. The human will is free and 
at the same time it is not free. There is 
a Christian fatalism just as surely as 
there is a pagan fatalism, and it is very 
wise for us to face the matter and to 
think it through and to make it a molding 
power in our lives. 

What is Christian fatalism ? 

Paul understood it. He declared that 



Compelled Men 

he had been laid hold on by Jesus Christ, 
that he preached the gospel because 
necessity was laid upon him to preach 
the gospel, that the love of Jesus Christ 
compelled him. Peter and John, dragged 
before the Council, and straitly forbidden 
with threats to preach in the name of 
Jesus, cried out as Luther was to do in 
later centuries : "We cannot but speak 
the things we have seen and heard. " 
They were thrust on and on by a power 
in whose grip they were powerless. 
Livingstone was driven over Africa by 
a force stronger than his own will. "If 
I were to follow my own inclinations/' 
he said, "they would lead me to settle 
down quietly with the Bokwains or some 
other small tribe and devote some of my 
time to my children; but Providence 
seems to call to the regions beyond," and 
that call led him on and on over the 
graves of all that men hold dear to a 
death alone in the jungles of the Congo. 
Hear him in the wilds of Shupanga weep- 
ing like a child at the grave of his wife : 
"O my Mary, my Mary ! how often have 



Compelled Men 

we longed for a quiet home since you and 
I were cast adrift at Kolobeng." But it 
was only for a moment. As with the 
Master whom he served, the spirit 
"drave" him again on into the wilderness 
and to death. 

The whole army of the martyrs suf- 
fered because of a spirit within them in 
whose hands they were powerless. God 
help them, they could do nothing else. 
A bare record of instances would be a 
book. I need tell but one case. When 
the prime minister of Madagascar put 
in force the decree of his queen that all 
Christians should be brutally massacred, 
he found himself faced by his own 
nephew. "I am a Christian," the young 
man said; "put me to death, for I must 
pray." It is worthy of a place beside 
even the story of that other compelled 
man who despite his king's decree opened 
his window and prayed three times a day 
with his face toward Jerusalem. 

According to Emerson, every great 
man is a compelled man: "What he did 
he did because he must : he used no elec- 



Compelled Men 

tion ; it was the most natural thing in the 
world," and this, like so much of Emer- 
son, gives us a key. The great man is 
compelled by something w T ithin him that 
we call character, and he defines charac- 
ter as "centrality, the impossibility of 
being displaced or overset." It is char- 
acter, therefore, that compels. 

And what is character? It is the sum 
of our whole past life; it is the total of 
our yesterdays; it is thought and act 
repeated and repeated until they become 
at length a part of ourselves, until, in 
fact, they become ourselves. It is inertia : 
"he that is unjust, let him be unjust stiir 
— he will be, he is compelled to be ; "he 
that is filthy, let him be filthy still ; and he 
that is righteous, let him be righteous 
still. " A man is carried over a crisis only 
by the inertia of his past. The past 
compels him. 

Battles are not won during the hour of 
actual conflict. Captain Hank Hafr\ 
more than once the successful defender 
of the America's cup, declared that no 
race was ever won between the opening 

10 



Compelled Men 

and the finishing gun. Ten men who in 
every way look much alike line up for the 
foot-race. A stranger walking along the 
line could not even hazard a guess as to 
the winner, yet one of them has won even 
before the pistol cracks. They bound 
away, each doing his utmost, and one 
finishes the course a full lap ahead of all 
the others. His trainers knew he would 
do it. The fatalist says the nine others 
had no chance, and he is right. It was 
fated to come out just as it did. The 
race was lost and won before ever it was 
run. The winner was just as much the 
winner of the race an hour before the 
finish as he was an hour afterwards. He 
was predestined to win. The whole thing 
was foreordained before ever it took 
place. 

All this is perfectly true, but there is 
another half pi the question that is also 
perfectly true. Why did the man win? 
Simply because for a year he had been 
preparing to win. He had practiced 
every day and the others had practiced 
only sporadically, or they had begun 



Compelled Men 

only a few weeks before the race. The 
foot-race of June is won always in 
March. It is not the present moment that 
counts : it is the accumulated past. Each 
of the nine was free to win the race if 
you go back far enough. Our yesterdays 
were free ; today we are the slaves of our 
yesterdays. Our only hope is that today 
is in our hands, and we may so use it as 
to compel our tomorrows. 

Character is fate. A sudden flood 
bursts upon the great retaining dam and 
it gives away and scatters ruin, but it was 
not the flood that broke the dam. It was 
the twenty years of silent dry rot that 
preceded the flood. It was compelled to 
go down not because of the crisis, but 
because of the twenty years before the 
crisis. A young man suddenly yields to 
gross temptation and his fall is the won- 
der of his friends. "How could he do 
such a thing ?" they ask each other. "I 
should as soon have thought of my own 
brother's doing it." But it was not the 
sudden temptation that wrecked the man. 
His intimate friend could tell you that 

12 



Compelled Men 

the walls of his room for years had been 
covered with suggestive pictures. Un- 
known perhaps to himself, a dry rot had 
been at work within him which had 
destroyed all the sinews of his will. The 
last straw is always blamed for the 
breakdown. 

In a certain town they will tell you 
with wonder that Robert Lane died from 
eating a single piece of mince pie, but on 
the books of God it is written differently. 
The truth of the matter is that he died 
from twenty years of gross overeating, 
and the pie was only the last straw. 
Doctors tell us that in such diseases as 
pneumonia and typhoid fever the patient 
has small chance if his heart has been 
weakened in any way in the years before. 
There is small hope for even the mod- 
erate drinker in the crisis of pneumonia. 
It is so in every crisis: the only thing we 
can draw upon is our past. Happy the 
man who in the crisis has a strong, clean, 
accumulated past to draw upon. 

In the moral crisis only character 
counts, and I would define character as 

13 



Compelled Men 

the five, ten, twenty years preceding the 
crisis. The crisis never compels ; it is the 
character of the years before it. "What 
a man does," says Emerson, "that he 
has." Yes, and we may add, that he is. 

II 

There are two kinds of compelled men : 
those compelled from the higher sides of 
their natures and those compelled from 
the lower. Christian fatalism differs 
from the doctrines of Kismet and blind 
necessitarianism in this, and it is the dif- 
ference between life and death: Chris- 
tianity believes that man is given free 
choice as to which is to rule him, the 
higher or the lower. 

" Men at some time are master of their fates : 
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
But in ourselves, that we are underlings." 

It may be said that all of Shakespeare's 
tragedies, in sharp contrast with those 
of the Greeks, are founded on this prin- 
ciple. Up to the central point of each of 
his plays man is master of his fate ; after 



Compelled Men 

this point Fate is master of him. Macbeth 
begins as the hero of Scotland. We see 
planted within him the first seeds of 
ambition. After he has saved his country 
twice in one day he awakes to the realiza- 
tion that he has within him more of 
kingly qualities than has the feeble old 
king, Duncan. The suggestion comes 
ever and ever stronger to him to make 
way with the king and take his place, and 
at last he yields, but up to the middle of 
the third act he is master of his fate. 
Then suddgily the tide turns. Fleance 
escapes, and from that moment he is in 
the grip of a power that hurries him 
swiftly to destruction. 

" They have tied me to a stake ; I cannot fly, 
But bear-like I must fight the course," 

and his life goes out in roars and blas- 
phemy. All of the tragedies of Shake- 
speare are sermons from a single text: 

" There is a tide in the affairs of men 
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to 

fortune ; 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries." 



Compelled Men 

This principle underlies all human life. 
Men are free to choose as they will, but 
their choice is their fate. By and by 
their choice will arise and compel them 
and there is no escape. A man goes into 
business and for years he gives to it his 
whole time and soul and life. His motto 
is, "Drive your business," and he drives 
it. But at length he wakes up, and finds 
himself driven by his business. One of 
the early settlers returned one evening in 
time to see a bear walk through the open 
door into his log cabin. Cautiously he 
crept up, slammed the door shut, and 
putting his back to it shouted, "I've got 
him ! I've got him !" But the bear be- 
came excited and began to rage up and 
down the narrow room. There was no 
way of fastening the door, and it took 
all the man's power to keep the ferocious 
beast from bursting it open and destroy- 
ing him. Instead of having the bear, the 
bear had him. 

Many a successful man has shouted in 
glee : "I'm master now ; I'm running my 
business,", only swiftly to awake with the 



Compelled Men 

cry: "The business is my master; it's 
running me." Jadwin, in Norris's novel, 
"The Pit," awoke after the crash with 
the cry: "The wheat cornered me, not I 
the wheat." 

Marion Harland once said that the 
most pitiable sight she ever saw was that 
of a woman in an insane asylum who for 
ten years had washed constantly a single 
window. "So long as she might scrub 
and polish she said never a word, and 
noticed nothing that went on about her. 
That was a dozen years ago. Still by 
closing my eyes, I can see the face of 
the woman with the suds. It is creased 
by wrinkles, all drooping downward. 
The lips are compressed to a pitiful 
thread. Deep-set eyes are 'crossed' by 
years of intent gazing at one object. The 
complexion is opaque and sallow, as of 
one long dead. I have dreamed of her, 
awaking with a prayer upon my lips, not 
for her who was beyond the reach of hu- 
man help, but for those others whose 
representative I have held her to be." 

Those who deal in material things 



Compelled Men 

should be careful not to let those mate- 
rial things become their masters. The 
hackneyed anecdote about Charles Dar- 
win, who loved music and art and the 
higher life in his earlier years, but w T ho, 
by long poring over scientific things, 
killed in his soul all desire for such 
things, is a perfect illustration. It is 
appalling to look about us and to see the 
starved souls of our successful men. 
How many of them are totally absorbed 
in merely material things and incapable 
of knowing anything else. One finds 
them in Europe, on the vacation they 
have planned all their lives, miserable 
and helpless. There is nothing there 
that chords with their souls. "A man 
finds in Europe only what he takes to 
Europe." 

The man in the grip of his lower nature 
is a slave. Sam Carey, one night in the 
Water Street Mission, testified that if a 
glass of whiskey sat within reach of his 
hand and he absolutely knew that to 
drink it would plunge him into hell within 
ten seconds, he would drink it without 



Compelled Men 

an instant's hesitation. He couldn't help 
himself. 

There is no need of multiplying 
instances of men compelled by their lower 
natures. I shall not dwell on this phase 
of the subject. We all know that the 
power of the animal within us is almost 
inconceivable, but, thank God, we also 
know that this power never comes down 
upon us with a sudden swoop. We begin 
always by being our own masters and we 
can always be masters if we will. The* 
devil makes always a long and steady 
approach with infinite patience. Give 
him his due, he strikes like the rattlesnake 
only after he has repeatedly warned his 
victim. It is impossible to go to hell 
without passing with open eyes a thou- 
sand red danger-signals. 

Fate? Yes, but we make it ourselves. 
We plant with our own hands those 
things that later spring up and compel us. 

Rule 1. Let no day go by with- 
out enriching the life of the soul. 
The eight-hour day? Yes, and 
then eight hours of work for the 



Compelled Men 

higher life, and eight hours of sleep. 
Make your vocation successful, but 
have as an avocation something that 
will call out every day the best that 
is in your life. Read every day good 
books, listen to great music, look at 
the finest in art, and cultivate the 
life of the soul. Keep your heart 
sensitive and your real self on the 
higher levels. 



Ill 

First of all, we are compelled by habit 
and by the things in our life that we make 
automatic through frequent repetition. 
Habit has been defined as "a groove in 
the mind down which action runs with- 
out thought/' A shower descends upon 
a newly ploughed hillside and the water 
worms its way to lower levels in any way 
it can. It leaves a tiny groove in the 
earth and from that time all water that 
falls on the field will run away in the 
same channel. Deeper and deeper it will 
grow with every shower, until at length 
it will become a rut and then a gully and 

20 



Compelled Men 

then a gorge and then a canyon. That 
is habit. 

The sensitive part of man — nerve, tis- 
sue, brain, spinal cord, ganglion, soul, 
heart, mind — everything that receives 
impressions from any source whatever, 
may be likened, if you will, to wet plas- 
ter of Paris. Every impression, no 
matter how delicate, makes its mark. 
Then slowly the cast hardens and there 
is no erasing the record. There are 
those who have held the somewhat fanci- 
ful theory that the books of the recording 
angel are simply the tablets of our own 
brain and nervous tissue from which it 
is impossible to erase a single impression. 

" The Moving Finger writes ; and, having writ, 
Moves on : nor all your Piety nor Wit 

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, 
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it." 

Man has been described as a bundle of 
habits. Almost everything he does, — 
walking, manual skill of any kind, talk- 
ing, reading, writing, — everything, in 
fact, save a few reflex actions like breath- 



Compelled Men 

ing and the action of the internal organs 
not dependent on the will, comes as a 
result of deliberate effort repeated until 
it has become automatic. 

The finest skill comes ever from con- 
stant repetition. The man at the bat in 
a ball game smashes a terrific liner right 
over the pitcher, who darts up his right 
hand and catches it. It is almost like 
catching a bullet. He looks as surprised 
at his success as any of the spectators. 
It was purely automatic and as one thinks 
of it and analyzes it, it seems like a mira- 
cle. It was done quicker than thought. 
It could come only after years of prac- 
tice. An engineer running at sixty miles 
an hour saw as he rounded a curve an 
obstruction on the track. Automatically 
and literally quicker than thought he 
threw the throttle wide open and crashed 
through the obstacle. When the train 
stopped the passengers flocked out, and 
among them an expert who declared that 
no other course could have saved the 
train. "How did you think to do it ?" he 
asked. "I didn't think," was the reply; 

22 



Compelled Men 

"it did itself." And then he told them 
that for years he had planned if ever he 
was confronted by such an emergency to 
meet it just as he did. That is what habit 
does at the crisis. It compels. Action 
runs down the groove without thought. 

It is psychologically true that man is 
the slave of his yesterdays. A student 
comes the first day into the classroom 
and wanders carelessly into a seat. The 
chances are ninety to one that he will 
take the same seat the next day. Stover, 
in the characteristic story, "The Var- 
mint," believing that every man's hand 
was against him, ran away in terror 
whenever any student made after him. 
He despised himself for his cowardice 
as much as any one in the school despised 
him, and he made most ferocious resolves 
not to run again, but as the author 
phrases it : "He did run again, and often, 
despite all his resolves, impelled always 
by the psychological precedent that he 
had run before." 

Habit becomes second nature. Why 
did the rich young man turn away sor- 

23 



Compelled Men 

rowful at the command of Jesus to sell 
and give? Because his money had be- 
come a part of himself. He turned, com- 
pelled by the logic of his whole previous 
career. That is -why it is so hard for a 
rich man to enter the Kingdom of 
Heaven. The habits of a lifetime become 
chains of steel. 

A paragraph from one of Dick Steele's 
essays has always impressed me by its 
pathos and its truth to life : 

"His physician and his wife were in close 
whisper near his bedside. I overheard the 
doctor say to the poor gentlewoman, 'He can- 
not possibly live till five in the morning/ She 
received it like the mistress of a family, pre- 
pared for all events. At the same instant came 
in a servant, who said, 'Madam, the undertaker 
is below according to your order/ The words 
were scarce out of her mouth when the sick 
man cried out with a feeble voice, Tray, 
doctor, how went bank stock today at 
'change ?' " 

"The ruling passion strong in death" is 
only another way of saying that the habit 
of a lifetime comes to dominate the life 

24 



Compelled Men 

and there is no escape. The little channel 
of habit has worn into a canyon and its 
walls are those of a dungeon. 

The teaching is clear: guard the first 
impressions. The child is indeed the 
father of the man in the sense that what 
the child does the man will be. One can 
fill his early life with that which will 
compel his later years to be strong and 
beautiful. We are what we look at, what 
we think of, what we live with. 

An American once called at the house 
of the artist Hoffman. He was ushered 
by the servant into the reception room 
and left alone. As he sat there awaiting 
the master, he became aware that all the 
walls of the room were covered with 
portraits of Jesus Christ: Jesus in his 
youth, Jesus in the temple, Jesus in suf- 
fering and joy, Jesus in every phase of 
his marvelous life, and he forgot himself 
and his errand in the glory of the room. 
Then he heard a voice and turned, and 
for a moment he thought Jesus himself 
in the very flesh had entered the room. 
It was the same face that had looked 

25 



Compelled Men 

from the walls ; it was Herr Hoffman, the 
artist, who through years of contempla- 
tion of Jesus Christ had grown to look 
like him. The Christ had become the 
habit of his life and it had transfigured 
him and compelled him. 

My second rule is taken from the 
"Rules for Life/' of Thomas Jefferson : 

Rule 2. "Never suffer a thought 
to be harbored in your mind which 
you wouldn't avow openly. When 
tempted to do anything in secret, 
ask yourself if you would do it in 
public. It you would not, be sure it 
is wrong/' 

And this is from William James : 

Rule 3. "Seize the first possible 
opportunity to act on every resolu- 
tion you make, and on every emo- 
tional prompting you may experience 
in the direction of the habits you 
aspire to gain. Never suffer an ex- 
ception to occur till the new habit 
is securely rooted in your life. Keep 
the faculty of effort alive within you 
bv a little gratuitous exercise everv 
day." 



Compelled Men 

IV 

We are compelled by our inheritance. 
Noblesse oblige is an old motto. The 
realization that he is the scion of an 
ancient house whose escutcheon has 
never been blotted has held many a 
wavering young man firm. It would be 
well for many to read Cornelia Comer's 
story, "The Long Inheritance/' in the 
Atlantic Monthly. A wife becomes 
infatuated with another man to the de- 
gree that she removes to Reno for a 
divorce. But at the crisis she finds her- 
self powerless to be untrue. The long 
inheritance, a name unspotted through 
generations of God-fearing and pure- 
souled men and women, compels her, 
and she goes back to the husband who 
understands and forgives. 

Noblesse oblige rules all of us. We 
are every one of us bound by a long 
inheritance. There is our civilization, 
won for us bit by bit with suffering and 
toil and sacrifice and death. The very 
richness of our inheritance compels us. 

27 



Compelled Men 

There is our country, bought for us at 
what a price! Who is there who can 
tell unmoved the story of those fierce 
years of battle with the forest and the 
elements, of those mothers of the wilder- 
ness whose tears fell thick as they toiled 
in loneliness and fear, of those thousands 
who sickened and died miles from all 
help and were buried in the woods? 

"And have you read 

The roll-call of our dead? 

Those stern, brave mothers of the raw- 
frontiers, 

Those mighty pioneers, 

Whose every step was toil and sacrifice 

And blood and streaming eyes? 

And think you that the tears 

And heartbreaks of that fierce three hundred 
years 

Have been forgot? 

No. Every mile of our vast nation's spread 

Is sacred with our dead, 

And every page upon our record roll 

Has its heroic soul. 

And can we cravens be 

Who heir this mighty, blood-bought legacy? 

Can we be sordid souled 

And sell our priceless heritage for gold, 

28 



Compelled Men 

Who bear within our veins some hero's tide 
And breathe full-lunged the air for which he 
died?" 

How can an American be frivolous or 
untrue when he reads the story of Ply- 
mouth Rock and that first winter in the 
Wilderness, and of the sufferings at 
Valley Forge? 

The Fatherland speaks always with 
authority. Suppose Nelson at the begin- 
ning of the battle had said, "Every man 
who fights well will be given twenty 
guineas/' or "Fight well and I will see 
that each of you is promoted. ,, He did 
nothing of the kind. He set the signal, 
"England expects every man to do his 
duty," and the men won the battle. The 
Fatherland was looking and the fact com- 
pelled them to fight as nothing else could 
possibly have done. 

Whether or not Captain Smith of the 
Titanic addressed his men as reported 
matters but little. The fact remains that 
no speech could have been more appro- 
priate than, "Be British, men." An 
hour's harangue would have done no 

29 



Compelled Men 

more. Be British — behind them lay 
ten centuries of heroic action : the Black 
Prince at Cressy; Drake and the sea 
kings who sunk the Armada; the last- 
fight of the Revenge; King Henry and 
his handful at Agincourt ; Balaclava ; the 
relief of Lucknow; that handful in the 
Kaffir war, surrounded, escape impossi- 
ble, death inevitable, standing with bared 
heads and singing, "God save the Queen," 
then fighting till the last man's life had 
been crushed out; the cruiser Birken- 
head, rammed and sinking, escape impos- 
sible, the troops falling into line at the 
blast of the bugle as if on dress parade, 
and going down, each man at attention 
and saluting the flag. Be British ! — God 
help them, with such a past there was 
nothing else for them to do, and how 
British they were the world knows. 

" Tears for the dead who shall not come again 
Homeward to any shore on any tide: 
Tears for the dead, but through that bitter 

rain 
Breaks like an April sun the smile of pride. 
What courage yielded place to other's needs, 



Compelled Men 

Patient of discipline's supreme decree! 
Well may we guess, who know that gallant 

breed 
Schooled in the ancient chivalry of the sea." 

But the most compelling of all inheri- 
tances is a Christian home and the mem- 
ory of a happy childhood. He who has 
had it, let him thank God every evening 
and morning. Every unit of that home 
— father, mother, brother, sister, grand- 
parent, relative — is an anchor to one's 
life, compelling it to hold true in the 
crisis. I believe that the child should 
be kept in the home atmosphere as long 
as possible. I have no sympathy with 
the "mollycoddle" argument and the ad- 
vice "throw him out early and let him 
learn the world." The sheltered life 
becomes the strong life. The city and 
the nation today are run by country boys 
who did not leave their native hills until 
their characters had hardened into final- 
ity. As long as the life is surrounded by 
father and mother and sisters and rela- 
tives, all of whom are watching and all 
of whom care deeply, the life is com- 



Compelled Men 

pelled. Keep the home atmosphere about 
the boy and about the girl until it be- 
comes their very life. 

The reason why boys go to the bad in 
the city is because there is nothing to 
compel. The circle of the home and the 
relatives and the neighbors is far away. 
Says President Wilson: "One of the 
great dangers of the city is that so many 
boys come here so far from their homes 
that they believe that no home folks are 
around to watch them. They are too 
apt to adjourn their morals and have a 
fling. If they only thought the people 
at home were there they would keep 
steady." 

But the boy from the true home is 
held fast even by the memory of that 
home. Mother's letter every week, the 
photographs of home scenes and home 
folk that he hangs about his room, the 
souvenirs of early days, and the frequent 
gifts from brothers and sisters and aunts 
and uncles, all these things hold him and 
compel him. The boy away from home 
at school or in college should awake 



Compelled Men 

every morning with the thought: "I'm 
an investment. Father and mother are 
putting money and hopes and dreams 
into me. It is for me to make the invest- 
ment good. I'm a despicable rascal if 
I don't. It would be as if I stole the 
money and squandered it." 

We are all of us investments, for that 
matter. A man once in his vanity and 
pride boasted: "I'm a self-made man. 
Every dollar I own I made myself. I 
have given the college a hundred thou- 
sand dollar building in full payment for 
educating me. I'm square there. I have 
paid ten times over for every cent that 
was ever invested for me and I stand 
on my two feet my own man." He was 
a fool, that was all. 

A man is the sum of his ancestors. 
Where did he get his judgment and his 
business shrewdness? From his grand- 
father, the shrewd old Scotchman. 
Where did he get his compelling person- 
ality and his active temperament ? From 
his mother's side of the house. He had 
nothing to say about these, and without 



Compelled Men 

them there would have been little boast- 
ing. 

A man is the result of his times and 
his environment. Was his birth in Amer- 
ica during the vital nineteenth century, 
his surroundings that made an education 
easy, his inheritance of business condi- 
tions, of laws and customs, of exemp- 
tions and opportunities — were these of 
his own making ? Did he mold the influ- 
ences that surrounded his childhood? 
Can money pay for what mother and 
father give? Can a paltry mass of brick 
and mortar pay for what the college gave 
him in his impressionable period, the 
college with its traditions, its visions, its 
circle of professors who have touched 
the learning of the world and who have 
about them something of the glow of 
the prophet and the seer; its hundreds 
of eager students with their ambitions 
and their dreams, their courage and their 
energy — can money buy these things ? 

The man who boasts of himself as 
self-made is indeed a fool. He has been 
made by ten thousand things over which 

34 



Compelled Men 

he has had no control, and the part that 
he himself has added to his building is 
ludicrous in its smallness. All that is 
good in his life has been put there by 
some one's sacrifice and suffering, and 
the very fact that he boasts shows that he 
knows nothing of either. He is simply a 
fool. Every man is an investment, even 
from the paltry standpoint of mere dol- 
lars and cents. And when we approach 
the higher standpoint, how emphatic it is. 
"We are not our own: we are bought 
with a price." And the fact that we are 
investments puts compulsion upon us. 
Let us see to it that we yield at least bank 
percentage, and let us aim at forty and 
sixty and even one hundred-fold. 

Yes, the home compels, and thank God, 
we can't escape the compulsion. Every 
thought of mother and home steadies our 
lives and steels our wills. One must get 
far away from mother before he can 
commit a sin. Think of her. She 
prayed for you before you were born. 
She dreamed over your cradle of the 
strong, glorious life that you were to 



Compelled Men 

lead — her noble boy, her support in her 
feeble years. Not a day but she sacri- 
ficed for you. What man so mean as 
to disappoint such hopes and such love? 

One cannot, if he will, escape the com- 
pulsion of a mother's prayers. Bishop 
Matthew Simpson tells very feelingly of 
the forces that led him into the Christian 
ministry. He was an awkward boy, 
harsh and halting of speech, and he 
trembled at the thought of an audience, 
yet as he approached manhood the con- 
viction somehow became deeper and 
deeper within him that he ought to 
preach the gospel. But the difficulties 
seemed so insuperable that he gave up all 
plans for entering the ministry and be- 
gan upon a course in medicine. Three 
years he was in the medical college and 
in all that time the voice within him kept 
crying, "Enter the ministry; enter the 
ministry." It haunted him day and night. 
He prayed over it in agony of soul, but 
he could not bring himself to take the 
step. The cost seemed too great. 

His mother was a widow wholly de- 

36 



Compelled Men 

pendent upon her son, and the call asked 
him to give up his medical profession 
just as he was ready to practice, and 
begin a new three years of preparation. 
But at last after agony and tears he sur- 
rendered and in bitterness of soul he 
went to break the news to his mother. 
Then the surprise of his life came to him. 
"Never shall I forget," he says, "how 
my mother turned upon me with a smile 
and said, 'My son, I have been looking 
for this hour ever since you were born.' 
Then she told me how she and my 
father — who was then a dying man — 
kneeled beside me in the cradle, conse- 
crated me to God, and prayed that I 
might become a minister. And she added 
that not a day had passed but that the 
repetition of that prayer had mounted to 
the throne of God." 

Truly here was a compelled man. 
Would God there were in our land today 
more of such fathers and mothers. 

Rule 4. Capitalize your past. 
Keep always first in your heart the 
old circle of the home. Never for 

37 



Compelled Men 

one moment forget it. Surround 
yourself with all you can that will 
keep it alive and make it a com- 
pelling force in your life. 



V 



Comme il faut is the Frenchman's way 
of describing good society — as it must be. 
It applies to all society. We must con- 
form to the standards about us ; in Rome 
we must do as the Romans do or else 
be branded as eccentric and looked upon 
with suspicion. "Environment is the 
father of us all," says one, "environment 
and heredity," and Dr. O. W. Holmes has 
somewhere put it in this form : "We are 
all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs 
of our tribe. ,, We are compelled by our 
environment: our times, our town, our 
neighborhood, our church or lodge, our 
college and fraternity. Human nature 
does not change from century to century, 
but times change. Every age and every 
century, we might say every year, has 
its own ideals and customs and fashions. 

38 



Compelled Men 

Had we lived in imperial Rome we, too, 
would have been Romans at heart, we, 
too, would have shouted at the gladiato- 
rial' combats, and thrilled at the sight of 
kings dragged at the chariot wheels of 
Caesar. Had we lived in colonial Salem, 
we, too, would have believed in witches. 
Compare the England of William the 
Conqueror with that of George V. Com- 
pare the Japan of 1813 with that of 1913. 
It is the same land and the same race, 
but how vastly different. 

Consider how we are -swept along by 
the currents of our time. We have our 
churches and speakers and books and 
papers. We admire greatly a leading 
figure in political life. In two years, per- 
haps, we find our whole attitude toward 
the man has changed. Why? Because 
of the papers we have read and the con- 
versations that we have heard around us. 
Ten thousand influences impinge upon us 
daily and of most of them we are 
unconscious. 

Here is the chief danger of the mis- 
sionary in the field. There are no exter- 



Compelled Men 

nal aids to compel him. Donald Frazer 
has summed up the matter most admir- 
ably. "The foreign field is no hotbed 
for saints. Rather it is a place of dread- 
ful spiritual tragedy. There men live 
away from all the old influences of 
Christian society ; they live among others 
where the social conscience is pitched on 
a lower key than anything we know of 
here at home. They hear things daily 
that they ought not to hear, see things 
they ought not to see, and the tendency 
is always for what is fine in us to grow 
coarse, to sympathize with clay." Liv- 
ingstone found this his hardest trial. 
"To endure/' he said, "the dancing, roar- 
ing and singing, the jesting, gambling, 
quarreling and murdering of these chil- 
dren of nature, was the severest penance 
I had yet undergone in the course of my 
missionary duties." 

One's character is built up by the 
society in which he moves. We do 
things that will be approved of by those 
about us and we refrain from doing 
things that will be censured. Right here 

40 



Compelled Men 

is the chief value of church membership 
or of membership in the good lodge or 
fraternity. It enlarges the circle of those 
who care; it brings fellowship of kin- 
dred souls; it surrounds one with an 
atmosphere that makes truth and purity 
and uprightness the natural and inevit- 
able thing. It props up the life at the 
weak points and compels it to stand 
strong. 

A young man I once knew was going 
wrong in college. He was wasting his 
nights with a roistering crew and was 
drinking and gambling and utterly neg- 
lecting his college work. He laughed at 
warnings and sneered at counsel. The 
wise ones said it was a hopeless case; 
one more semester would settle it. Then 
suddenly the young man awoke and the 
cause was this : A committee from his 
fraternity visited him. They did not 
preach or moralize, they plainly said: 
"You simply have got to cut this stuff 
out. If it affected nobody but yourself 
you might go to the devil and we would 
mind our own business, but you are dis- 



Compelled Men 

gracing the frat, you are smutching the 
whole of us, you are putting the first blot 
on the fraternity that's ever been on it, 
and you've simply got to stop. You're 
going to make good and we are going 
to see that you do it. Where's your cal- 
culus lesson?" And he did make good; 
there was no other alternative. 

A man is compelled by his college, the 
old Alma Mater that is watching him. 
He thinks some night as he sits tempted 
and alone of the splendid circle of fellows 
that touched his life in those days that 
are like no others in all the world; he 
thinks of the rushes and the scraps when 
they stood shoulder to shoulder and 
fought for the old class ; he thinks of the 
football team as it battled in the mud, 
playing clean ball with every ounce of 
its strength, for the fellows on the side- 
line were singing the "Alma Mater" and 
the ball was going right down the field 
"for the glory of the old college"; he 
thinks of the grand old "Prexie" who 
preached the baccalaureate and of the 
professors who will read of his disgrace 

42 



Compelled Men 

if he doesn't make good; he finds him- 
self humming the college song: 

" May no act of ours bring shame 
To one heart that loves thy name, 
May our lives but swell thy fame, 
Dear old " 

A lump is in his throat and he has to 
swallow. He's humming now the old 
campus song in which the fellows 
blended so beautifully on those June 
evenings when the twilight stole through 
the trees; 

" Other days are very near us ; 

As we stand here in the glow, 
We can almost hear the voices 

Of the men of long ago, 
Who beneath these same old maples 

In the evening's fading light 
Sang the songs of Alma Mater 

As we sing them here to-night." 

And next June is the reunion, and the 
fellows will all be back again — and he 
springs to his feet and cries out, "My 
God, I'll be a man for the sake of the 
fellows and the old college." 

43 



Compelled Men 

Happy the man who is so hedged about 
that he must live every day up to the very 
best that is within him. In an annual 
church conference not long ago the 
Bishop called for the class of young men 
that was to be consecrated for full ser- 
vice in the Christian ministry. After 
they had come forward he asked if there 
was a father or mother of any of them 
who wished to stand at the altar with 
their boy. An old mother came timidly 
to the front, her eyes wet and the light of 
joy in her eyes, and took her place at the 
side of her son. Then he asked for any 
wives who might wish to stand at the 
side of their husbands, and several came 
forward. 

Then they all knelt together while 
the impressive service went on, and I 
thought, that young man with his old 
mother on one side and his young wife 
on the other, the whole atmosphere sur- 
charged with feeling and with the sense 
of high ideals, the Bishop and the old 
soldiers of Jesus Christ about him and 
on his right and left the class of conse- 



Compelled Men 

crated young men entering upon the same 
holy war — I thought, as I looked, not 
that they were going into hard places 
where every joint in their armor would 
be tested, but that they were going into 
the ways that are not rough, where the 
yoke is easy and the burden is light, for 
they were so hemmed about and upheld 
that they were compelled men, compelled 
to be true to the highest ideals of the 
gospel message, compelled to stretch up 
constantly toward the highest, and so 
compelled daily to grow, which is life 
indeed. 

Who would not be a hero and hew his 
way through Philistines to bring water 
from the well of Bethlehem, could he but 
have a David to bring it for? What an 
atmosphere that army must have been 
for soldiery. Who would not desire to 
live in a circle like that in Florence when 
Michael Angelo and Raphael were there, 
or in the London of Shakespeare when 
the very air was electric with the learning 
and wit and genius of the immortals of 
the Elizabethan age ? We sometimes sigh 

45 



Compelled Men 

that if we had lived in this time or that, 
when the atmosphere seemed charged 
with a subtle force, we, too, could 
have been heroes or poets or saints, but 
it is demoralizing to dwell long on such 
a thought. It makes us mere dawdlers 
and dreamers. For we can even today 
dwell in any atmosphere we will. God 
has anchored none of us. Do we wish 
to be heroes? The world was never so 
full of really heroic atmosphere as it is 
today and we may place ourselves where 
we will. All the mission frontiers 
breathe out the very soul of heroism. 
One may find heroes everywhere — in the 
slums of our cities, in hospitals and 
settlements, in country parsonages, in 
schools, and even in the kitchens of 
commonplace homes. Wherever there is 
self-sacrifice there is heroism of the finest 
type and one may be a part of it if he 
wills. 

Rule 5. Choose your environ- 
ment ; never allow it to choose you, 
unless you know it is one that will 
compel you to higher living. See to 

46 



Compelled Men 

it that you are in a place where you 
are not only held fast by the best 
forces, but where you are forced to 
grow larger mentally, morally and 
spiritually every day. Engrave on 
the tablet of your heart that rule of 
Emerson's : "A man should not go 
where he cannot carry his whole 
sphere or society with him, not 
bodily — the whole circle of his 
friends — but atmospherically." Join 
the church, join the good lodge, join 
the helpful fraternity, throw every 
influence possible about yourself so 
that in the crisis you may be held 
fast. 



VI 



Responsibility compels. I am con- 
stantly saying to young men: BY sure 
that you get a job that is large enough, 
one that you will have to stretch lip to 
with all your might, one that will com- 
pel you at every point. When you find 
things becoming easier after a time, gAt 
another and a larger job. The man who 

47 



Compelled Men 

is on his tiptoes all the time reaching 
up will grow. 

If you wish to do a kindness to a 
young man put responsibility upon him ; 
load him down with it. It seems hard, 
but it is kind. There is a story of a stage 
driver in Montana who on a bitter cold 
day had as passengers only a woman and 
her infant. The exposure ere long be- 
gan to tell upon the woman. A fatal 
drowsiness stole over her. The baby, 
snugly wrapped, was safe, but the mother 
was freezing to death. The driver had 
no extra wraps, there was no house for 
miles, but * he was equal to the emer- 
gency. Taking the baby he placed it 
warmly tinder the robe in front, then 
seizing the mother by the arm he dragged 
her to die frozen ground, sprang into his 
seat, and drove away, leaving her in the 
road'. Instantly she came to herself and 
began to run after the coach crying, "My 
b? by ! Oh, my baby !" In her horror she 
forgot the cold and ran and ran until at 
length the blood was again warm in her 
veins and she was saved. Then the 

48 



Compelled Men 

driver took her in again. That was not 
cruelty, that was kindness. It compelled 
her to do what she herself would never 
have done of herself. God sometimes 
deals that way with us. The point is 
worth thinking about. Many a young 
man complains of the way fate is using 
him ; he is compelled to do what his 
whole soul cries out against, and he 
asks to be lightened of his burden, but 
it may be that perfect kindness instead 
of lightening would heap on still more. 
Much better is it to "glory in tribulations, 
knowing that tribulation worketh pa- 
tience, and patience experience, and expe- 
rience hope, and hope maketh not 
ashamed. " 

Even bodily defects may be blessings 
in disguise. We are willing to believe 
that the deformity and weakness of Pope, 
the poet, were advantageous to him as a 
writer. "Whosoever," says Bacon, "hath 
anything fixed in his person that doth 
induce contempt, hath also a perpetual 
spur in himself to rescue and deliver 
himself from scorn." 

49 



Compelled Men 

Is there a weak brother in the church ? 
Put some responsibility upon him. Give 
him something to do where failure will 
count large. Have you an incorrigible 
boy in the class ? Use him ; let him see 
that he is being trusted to such an extent 
that failure on his part would be dis- 
astrous. In a boys' club there was a 
young fellow who was always a disturb- 
ing element. He was incorrigible and yet 
he was quick and bright and he was a 
leader. So dangerous an element was 
he that it seemed as if he would break 
up the club. But the superintendent was 
a wise man. They were electing officers 
and he whispered to one of the older 
boys, "Elect 'Roughneck Dick' presi- 
dent." More as a joke than anything 
else, they did it. "Naw, you don't," 
shouted Dick to the superintendent ; "you 
don't ring me in as president. You'll 
have to set up another." "Why, what 
do you mean?" said the superintendent; 
"I didn't put you in. The fellows elected 
you. I can't excuse you. You'll have to 
get the fellows to reconsider if you can't 

50 



Compelled Men 

serve. They have elected you their presi- 
dent and you are accountable to them/' 
The fellows refused to reconsider; and 
Dick, before he had realized at all his 
position, was presiding, and he made the 
best president the club ever had. 

There are cases more illustrious than 
Dick's of the change that responsibility 
has wrought in a man. We remember 
how Prince Hal of England, the consort 
of Falstaff and Nym and Pistol, cut 
purses at night on the public highway 
and lived a life of great debauchery, but 
we remember that the moment he be- 
came king he changed completely, drove 
from the kingdom the gang of which he 
had once been the leader, and made his 
reign one of the most illustrious in Eng- 
lish annals. Very often it has seemed 
to change the whole character of a man 
to put upon him a policeman's uniform, 
and all of us have seen the transforma- 
tion which a few weeks will make in the 
life of a timid freshman as he turns all 
at once into a sophomore. 

Responsibility brings out the best that 

51 



Compelled Men 

is in us. The hero roll of the world is 
made up of those who did what they 
did because necessity was upon them. 
The Roman sentinel at Pompeii stood at 
his post during the rain of fire and died 
there, when he could have slipped away 
easily with the fleeing throng ; and he did 
it because the traditions of his office 
compelled him to remain at his post. So 
thoroughly had it been ground into his 
very life by years and generations of 
Roman discipline that any other course 
was to him unthinkable. He had been 
placed in a position of responsibility and 
he had not been recalled. That was 
enough for him. No one of the six 
hundred questioned the order to charge 
at Balaclava. The responsibility was put 
upon them to take the Russian battery, 
and without a word they rode into what 
seemed to them like certain death. 

A year ago Mrs. Peter Borque found 
herself alone with her infant child in the 
Board Rock Island lighthouse during a 
storm that threatened every moment the 
demolition of the structure. Her hus- 



Compelled Men 

band, the keeper, had been washed off 
and drowned during the afternoon, and 
night was coming down with the lantern 
unlit. She could, perhaps, keep herself 
and the baby warm in the room below, 
but there was the light to tend. She 
did not hesitate. With painful effort she 
groped her way with her baby into the 
lantern room. The apparatus was un- 
known to her; the storm had partially 
wrecked it ; and to make the light revolve 
as it should she knew no other way than 
to turn it by hand. For ten days and 
nights without fire and with almost noth- 
ing to eat she and her baby stayed in the 
lantern, she working every night the 
entire night through without a moment 
of rest. And the light never failed. Why 
did she do it ? It cost her her baby's life ; 
it cost her ten days of almost superhu- 
man effort. Her answer is the answer 
that has been made by every heroic soul 
that has measured up to his responsibil- 
ity: "I thought I should go mad, but I 
knew I had to do my duty." 

There are two theories of government. 

53 



Compelled Men 

The first one is based on the adage that 
there is safety in numbers. Give the 
government to a board of men ; distribute 
the responsibility; let them watch each 
other. The second is based on the adage, 
put all your eggs in one basket and watch 
the basket. Put power into the hands 
of one man, keep the fierce light upon 
him and so compel him to be true to 
his responsibilities. We are coming in 
America more and more to believe in 
this second method. The newer systems 
of city government place great power 
and great responsibility in the hands of 
single individuals, knowing that if there 
be misgovernment of any kind the author 
of it can be found instantly. We have 
all seen Thomas Nast's picture of the 
Tweed ring with each man in the circle 
pointing an accusing finger to his neigh- 
bor on the right. There is safety for 
wickedness in such numbers, whereas 
one man held responsible is compelled 
toward righteousness whether he wishes 
to be or not. 

The man with the great responsibility 

54 



Compelled Men 

upon him dismisses temptation with the 
reply of Nehemiah : "I am doing a great 
work, therefore I can not come down." 

Rule 6. Live the trusted life. Be 
greedy for responsibility ; invite bur- 
dens; surround yourself with wit- 
nesses. Count Duty the voice of 
God, and obey without exception its 
first call. 

VII 

Self-respect compels a man. Let every- 
one ask himself if he really appreciates 
what self-respect means. Think of it. 
You would take pains with your toilet 
and your table manners if a friend were 
to dine with you; would you take equal 
pains if you were to dine alone ? Yet you 
are to be there. A gentleman is told by 
his behavior when he is alone, not by 
his behavior when in society. Kipling 
has told of the English officer who, far 
in the interior of India, in the jungles, 
surrounded only by half-naked natives, 
always put on full dress for dinner. He 
was there. "Would you not be ashamed 



Compelled Men 

to have your master come in and catch 
you idle?" asks Franklin. "Then be 
ashamed to catch yourself idle." 

"Just stand aside, and watch yourself go by; 
Think of yourself as he instead of /. 
Pick flaws ; find fault ; forget the man is you, 
And strive to make your estimate ring true." 

The man who respects himself is a com- 
pelled man. He must live constantly up 
to his idea of himself. He cannot do in 
his own presence anything that he would 
consider wicked and debasing if he were 
to do it in the presence of another. He 
stands on his own feet; he becomes 
acquainted with his own soul, and know- 
ing it, he considers himself worthy of 
respect. When Montaigne traveled in 
Italy his arrival at each point was the 
arrival of a gentleman of France. 
"Wherever he goes he pays a visit," ob- 
served his chronicler, "to whatever 
prince or gentleman of note resides upon 
his road, as a duty to himself and civili- 
zation. When he leaves any house in 
which he has lodged for a few weeks he 
causes his arms to be painted and hung 

56 



Compelled Men 

up as a perpetual sign to the house, as 
was the custom of gentlemen." This was 
not vanity nor weak egotism ; it was self- 
respect. What home is there, now after 
the centuries, when we have come to 
know the true measure of the man, that 
would not respect and honor Montaigne 
should he make that home a visit ? Then 
why should Montaigne not respect and 
honor himself? He knew the worth that 
was in him better than any man or any 
age could ever know it. 

Emerson has taken ground just as 
strong. "A great man is coming," he 
says, "to eat at my house. I do not wish 
to please him ; I wish that he should wish 
to please me." This is not conceit if 
there be true worth in the man who says 
it. It is our duty to walk ever in the 
presence of our higher selves. To do it 
is to live always at our best, compelled by 
the God within us. And it will affect 
our whole outer life. 

" To thine own self be true ; 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man." 

57 



Compelled Men 

"I and God are left," said the French 
nobleman when the whole world turned 
against him. Happy man! Self-respect 
like that seeks partnership and fellow- 
ship even with Almighty God and deems 
itself worthy. It compels as nothing else 
save only love. To be compelled be- 
cause others are witnessing comes often 
from cowardice or vanity; to be com- 
pelled because we ourselves are witness- 
ing ourselves and refuse for self-respect's 
sake to do what we would not do in the 
presence of others, is a result only of 
character and that of the finest type. 

Rule 7. Forget not for a single 
moment that you are a bit of God, 
living for a time in a marvelous 
dwelling that His own hands have 
made. Do all that you do in view 
of this tremendous fact. When a 
man truly reverences himself he is 
reverencing God ; by the same act 
he is reverencing all other men ; and 
the next step follows inevitably: he 
cannot then be false to any man. 



58 



Compelled Men 

VIII 

Enlarge the area of your compulsions — 
there is no better advice than that — and 
one enlarges this area every time he adds 
to his life a friend. Every true friend 
is an anchor to windward. He who has 
a circle of friends is like a ship lying 
in the harbor in time of storm, sheltered 
on all sides by the wind-breaking head- 
lands. John Wesley once declared that 
he owed his success in life to a bit of 
advice which was given to him in his 
formative period : "You must either find 
companions or make them." He found 
them, eager young souls akin to his own, 
and they kindled each other, and sus- 
tained each other, and compelled each 
other. "How can one be warm alone?" 
How can one stand in time of crisis if 



no one cares: 



? 



"Every young man," declares Carlyle, 
"is the better for cherishing strong 
friendships with the wise and good ; and 
he whose soul is knit with one or more 



Compelled Men 

chosen associates with whom he can 
sympathize in right aims and feelings, is 
thereby the better armed against tempta- 
tion and confirmed in paths of virtue." 
"Life should be fortified," said Sydney 
Smith, "by many friendships." Emerson 
and many others have said the same 
thing : "We want one or two companions 
of intelligence, probity and grace, to wear 
out life with; persons by whom we can 
measure ourselves, and who shall hold 
us fast to good sense and virtue." Ibsen 
has presented the negative side of the 
same idea : "The cost of keeping friends," 
he says, "does not consist in what we do 
for them, but in what we leave undone 
out of regard to them." 

After all, life goes only in the direction 
of our friendships. The great break in a 
young man's life comes not when he 
leaves the shelter of his Alma Mater and 
plunges into the current of the world's 
activities. Generations of valedictorians 
have taught this doctrine, but it is not 
true. The real break, the really vital 
period in a young man's life, comes when 



Compelled Men 

he leaves home or fitting school and 
enters the college. It is then that he 
makes the vital friendships of his life, 
and with rare exceptions life thereafter 
must go as these friendships compel. 

The first month, the first fortnight, the 
first week even, of the freshman's life is 
often the most momentous one in his 
whole career. Within college walls 
"souls lie close together." There is a 
common sympathy and a common bond 
uniting in those first days souls that are 
in no other way allied. Before the fresh- 
man realizes it he has, in choosing his 
roommate, his messmates, his fraternity 
mates, his neighbors, blazed out the trail 
that his whole life must follow. 

So much has been written on friend- 
ship that it is useless to add more. Un- 
worthy friends we know drag the life 
down ; worthy friends fortify it and 
build it up. There is no need of expand- 
ing that. A life without friends, we 
know, too, is an ineffective life, a sterile 
and solitary life. We need sympathy 
every day, and the true friend gives it: 



Compelled Men 

" We share each other's woes, 
Our mutual burdens bear." 

We need encouragement and applause, 
and who but true friends will give it? 
We need exercise of our better selves 
and "iron sharpeneth iron" ; we need 
comprehension and we need communion 
with kindred souls. There is nothing that 
humanity is so hungry for as true sym- 
pathy and comprehension, and there is 
nothing that is so rare. Life is a poor, 
barren thing without these things, and 
friendship alone can give them. All this 
we have read until it no longer impresses 
us, but one phase of the matter has never 
been dwelt upon enough, and that is that 
friendship compels the life of both 
friends. Two lives which apart might 
both have gone to destruction will, when 
together, save each other and compel each 
other to be true to the highest that is 
within them. He has lived a life of 
poverty of soul who has not more than 
once said in his heart: "For thy sake, 
O my friend, I will be true to the God 
within me. To keep thy heart from pain I 

62 



Compelled Men 

will be true, O my friend, whom I love." 
Emerson, who so often has condensed a 
whole sermon into a sentence, has given 
us the picture : "Life goes headlong. We 
chase some flying scheme, or are hunted 
by some fear or command behind us ; but 
if suddenly we encounter a friend, we 
pause; our heat' and hurry look foolish 
enough; now pause, now possession is 
required, and the power to swell the 
moment from the resources of the 
heart." 

Rule 8. Go about diligently seek- 
ing friends as Diogenes went about 
seeking an honest man. Admit to 
friendship only those souls that are 
akin to thine — "friendship, one soul 
in two bodies" — and having found 
them, "grapple them to thy soul 
with hoops of steel," for "he that 
hath gained a friend, hath given 
hostages to fortune," and thereby is 
compelled. 



Compelled Men 



IX 

But after all, there is but one abso- 
lutely compelling force, one that can be 
trusted never to fail. Habit, however 
established, would never have driven 
Paul "in journeyings often, in perils of 
waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by 
my own countrymen, in perils by the 
heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in 
the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in 
perils among false brethren, in weariness 
and painfulness, in watchings often, in 
hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in 
cold and nakedness" ; his inheritance, — 
civilization, fatherland, home, — would 
never have driven Livingstone through 
seventy jungle fevers to his death alone 
in the swamps of the Congo; environ- 
ment-is no explanation of that cry of 
Luther's when the forces of his day 
swept like wolves upon him ; no responsi- 
bility laid upon Peter and John could 
have made them, simple and ignorant 
peasants as they were, defy that body 

64 



Compelled Men 

that had stoned Stephen to death ; self- 
respect, compelling as it is, is not com- 
pelling enough to account for Melvin Cox 
in Liberia, wasted to a skeleton by Afri- 
can fevers and sick almost to death, cry- 
ing out in firmness of soul, "My heart 
sighs for the comforts of America, but I 
dare not go" ; it was not friendship that 
made Jerome of Prague sing while the 
fire consumed his limbs and his life, 
"This soul in flames, dear Christ, I give 
to thee." Love never fails, and of all 
the forces of life we can say that of love 
only. 

We see the compulsions of love about 
us every day: mothers completely for- 
getful of self ; fathers sacrificing toil and 
property and even honor itself for the 
sake of a son; sisters toiling early and 
late to send a brother to college; sons 
giving up the bright promise of a career 
in the professions that father and mother 
may be cared for in the old home — the 
list is endless, for "love is strong as 
death" ; "love covereth all sins" ; "love 
suffereth long and is kind," love "bear- 



Compelled Men 

eth all things, believeth all things, hopeth 
all things, endureth all things/' 

The moment a man is truly in love, 
that moment his whole attitude toward 
life becomes changed. The crude boy 
who has read few books suddenly begins 
to take an interest in literature, for she 
loves poetry and romance. He has 
laughed at Wagner, but now he can't 
get enough of Wagner, for she plays the 
piano and Wagner is her enthusiasm. 
Love transforms as no other force in 
human life. She thinks you are manly 
and kind and sweet-souled, that there is 
an exquisite something about you that 
makes you finer and better than other 
men, and knowing this you instinctively 
become more manly and kind and sweet- 
souled. You stand more erect when you 
think of her; you could not read her 
letters in a low and vulgar atmosphere. 
Something compels you and it is not sel- 
fish at all. 

Read the letters that Elizabeth Barrett 
wrote to Browning, and c the poems, the 
"Sonnets from the Portuguese'' : 



Compelled Men 

" My own, my own, 
Who earnest to me when the world was gone. 
And I who looked for only God found thee! 
I find thee ; I am safe and strong and glad." 

Read the letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne 
to Sophia Peabody : 

"While I love you so dearly, and while 
I am so conscious of the deep union of 
our spirits, still I have an awe of you 
that I never felt for anybody else. I 
suppose I should have pretty much the 
same feeling if an angel should come 
from Heaven and be my dearest friend — 
only an angel could not have the tender- 
est of human natures, too." 

One might quote endlessly such senti- 
ments. There is the description which 
that cold Puritan, Jonathan Edwards, 
wrote of Sarah Pierpont, who became his 
wife: 

"She has a strange sweetness in her 
mind, and singular purity in her affec- 
tions ; is most just and conscientious in 
all her conduct; and you could not per- 
suade her to do anything wrong or sinful, 
if you would give her all the world. She 



Compelled Men 

is of a wonderful calmness, and universal 
benevolence of mind. She will some- 
times go about from place to place sing- 
ing sweetly, and seems to be always full 
of joy and pleasure and no one knows for 
what." 

Loves like these compel the lover to 
live at his very highest reach. One can- 
not think of self in the presence of her 
image. It wraps one beyond self and 
selfishness. "To live with her were life 
indeed/ 1 cries the lover, but he knows he 
is not worthy. He will make himself 
worthy. "To know her were a liberal 
education," said one of her he loved. 
Yes, and it is always so. The lover's 
first impulse is to project himself into a 
larger life, nobler, richer, purer. Sud- 
denly he would be perfect and not at all 
for himself. He must be worthy of the 
loved one. Portia voiced the desire of 
every sincere lover who has ever lived : 

" Though for my self alone 
I would not be ambitious in my wish, 
To wish myself much better ; yet, for you 
I would be trebled twenty times myself; 



Compelled Men 

A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times 

more rich ; 
That only to stand high in your account 
I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, 
Exceed account." 

The wish is father of the act. A life 
with such compulsion as this must grow 
toward its ideal and that with sureness. 
To love is to live hemmed about with 
compulsions, it is to live the life wherein 
all that is best within us is reaching up 
and growing Up and expanding on every 
side. 

"If you love me you will keep my com- 
mandments," said Jesus to his disciples. 
Of course they would; if they really 
loved him they couldn't help it. Love 
compels. Think of Elizabeth Barrett 
disregarding the wishes of him to whom 
she said, "I love thee to the depth and 
breadth and height my soul can reach ; 
I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, 
of all my life." She couldn't disobey his 
wishes if she tried. As soon expect the 
flower to turn away from the sun. Love 
compels. "Whosoever is born of God 



Compelled Men 

doth not commit sin ; he cannot sin be- 
cause he is born of God." Isn't it clear? 
We can use this as a thermometer to test 
our lives. "You do not love me," says 
Christ. "Why do you think so?" I ask. 
"Ah," comes the reply, "you are not 
keeping my commandments as you would 
be compelled to do if you really loved 
me." 

There is no better advice to young men 
than this: get a vision of Jesus Christ; 
just to see him is to love him and to love 
him forever. Marvelously winning he 
was as he went about among men. He 
said to Simon and Andrew, "Come ye 
after me," and "they straightway left the 
nets and followed him"; he spoke to 
James and John, and instantly they left 
their boat and their father and went with 
him until he died ; he saw the publican 
Matthew sitting at the place of toll and 
said, "Follow me," "and he forsook all, 
and rose up, and followed him." He 
inspired all about him with intense per- 
sonal loyalty. Thomas said, "Let us also 
go that we may die with him" ; Peter 

70 



Compelled Men 

said, "I will lay down my life for thee" ; 
women fell at his feet and bathed them 
with their tears; they anointed his head 
and his feet with the most costly of oint- 
ments and they followed him ministering 
unto him. 

And he gave his disciples every one 
the whole love of his heart, He called 
them pet names, — "little children"; he 
took John to his bosom; he wept when 
they died; he prayed for them the most 
tender prayer that the world has ever 
known, "Father, I will that they also, 
whom thou has given me, be with me 
where I am." 

Marvelously winning he was ; even the 
story of his life and the few words that 
he has left behind him, win us completely 
today. "Take my yoke upon you, and 
learn of me; for I am meek and lowly 
of heart." "Let not your heart be 
troubled : ye believe in God, believe also 
in me." One cannot long study the 
Gospels without being held and gripped 
by this marvelous personality. We won- 
der, we admire, we love, and then we are 



Compelled Men 

his forever. To know him is always to 
cry out from our souls : 

" O Master, could I surely know 
Where I could find thee here below, 
In Bethlehem or Galilee, 
How swiftly would I fly to thee. 

" How would I lean upon thy breast, 
How give to thee my very best, 
My life, my all — Oh, joy to see 
And follow thee, and follow thee." 

The love of Jesus Christ is the most 
compelling force that man has ever 
known. One glimpse of the face of Jesus 
Christ changed Paul from a narrow 
Pharisee persecuting the Church into a 
burning evangel crying from city to city, 
"For me to live is Christ/' "I count all 
things but loss, for the excellency of the 
knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord : for 
whom I have suffered the loss of all 
things, and do count them but refuse, 
that I may win Christ" ; "the love of 
Jesus Christ compels me." 

It was the sweet face of Jesus Christ 
bending above them in their torment and 



Compelled Men 

agony that sustained the great host of 
the martyrs and made them faithful unto 
death. It was this compelling love that* 
drove Livingstone over Africa. In fever 
and peril, in homesickness and desolation, 
in bereavement and heartbreak, he felt 
that his hand was in that of Jesus Christ, 
that this Jesus that had so filled his life 
that nothing else could dominate it was 
at his side every moment : 

" Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than 
hands and feet." 

It has been the force that has driven all 
the missionaries of the cross into their 
fields of danger, and loneliness, and 
death. To tell what men have done 
because they had had a vision of Jesus 
Christ and the love of Jesus Christ would 
be to write a complete history of the 
Christian Church. It is founded on love ; 
it is a story of the compulsions of love. 

Get a vision of this Christ ; it will turn 
a stagnant life into a mighty power. One 
glimpse of Jesus is enough. A single 
glimpse of the cup from which Jesus 



Compelled Men 

drank was enough for Perceval. Ques- 
tioned as to what drove him from the 
peace and security and pleasures of the 
table round, he answered: 

" The sweet vision of the Holy Grail 
Drove me from all vainglories, rivalries, 
And earthly heats that spring and sparkle out 
Among us in the jousts, while women watch." 

It holds us as nothing else can hold us. 
A mother's love holds us. When she is 
with us we are safe, and even her picture 
or her letter makes an atmosphere about 
us through which temptation does not 
come. But he who has had a vision of 
Jesus Christ and who knows that he is 
around about him every moment is held 
with a force a thousand times more 
powerful. Does temptation come? 

" I cannot do the thing I would 
Because his heart would grieve. ,, 

A few months before he died, Pro- 
fessor Benjamin Gill, of sainted memory 
to thousands, sent me this note and I pass 
it on to all the young men that I can : 



Compelled Men 

'Thank you for the dear note. The 
passage you quote is glorious. Blessed 
be God for the Christian's hope, the joy 
unspeakable. Read carefully and slowly 
Ephesians iii. 14-19 : Tor this cause I 
bow my knees unto the father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole 
family in heaven and earth is named, that 
he would grant you, according to the 
riches of his glory, to be strengthened 
with might by his spirit in the inner man ; 
that Christ may dwell in your hearts by 
love ; that ye, being rooted and grounded 
in love, may be able to comprehend with 
all the saints, what is the breadth and 
length and depth and height ; and to know 
the love of Christ, which passeth knowl- 
edge, that ye might be filled with all the 
fulness of God/ That prayer is my 
prayer for you. God bless you, old boy, 
and hold you fast." 

Letters like that compel a man. 

And from love to Christ it is but a 
single step to the love of neighbor as 
oneself. The step is inevitable. A little 
street boy playing on the wharf one day, 

75 



Compelled Men 

stumbled and fell in. Quick as a flash 
his little brother ten years old plunged in 
after him. When five minutes later the 
policeman said to the little fellow, 
"Sonny, that was a nervy thing to do," 
the boy looked up at him with real sur- 
prise in his eyes and said, "Why, Cop, 
don't you understand? He's my 
brother." That tells it all ; that explains 
many things that to the world are incom- 
prehensible. 

It explains the story told by Drum- 
mond of what he saw with his own eyes 
in Africa. The missionary Bain, shat- 
tered with fever, his holiday long over- 
due, his old widowed mother waiting for 
him in Scotland, had determined to go 
home for a few months and then, after 
he had recuperated, to go back to his 
work. He had actually boarded the Lake 
Nyassa steamer and was standing at the 
rail as the last preparations were made 
for sailing, but as he saw the little group 
of faithful natives which had come with 
him all the way from the interior, and as 
he thought of their need, and of the 

76 



Compelled Men 

slaver which had just begun to work in 
their territory, he suddenly ordered the 
captain to wait a moment, had his bag- 
gage sent ashore, and plunged back again 
into the fever land, the shepherd of his 
people. Only the love of Jesus Christ in 
a man's heart can compel him to do that. 

Rule 9. Get a vision of Jesus 
Christ. Read of him until he be- 
comes more real to you than father 
or mother. Give him all the love of 
your heart and your soul; he de- 
serves it all. Live all that you can 
in an atmosphere that is purer and 
sweeter and more lovely than you. 
Love God, love Jesus Christ, love 
all men. Your life will expand and 
sweeten and become a benediction to 
all about you. By and by your life 
will seem compelled by another hand 
than yours and you will be singing: 

" My bark is wafted to the strand 
By breath divine, 
And on its helm there rests a hand 
Other than mine." 



77 



Compelled Men 



X 



But there is a higher standpoint even 
yet. All these rules have in them a cer- 
tain selfish element : they teach one so to 
rule and encompass his life that he will 
be compelled to grow ever stronger and 
purer and holier. To aspire to such a life 
is indeed to take high ground; but it is 
a taking of vastly higher ground when 
one forgets himself and resolves to make 
himself a compeller of other men into 
the life that is strong and pure and holy. 
"Go out into the highways and hedges 
and compel them to come in," said Jesus. 
That is our commission; what does it 
mean? 

It means simply this: that the com- 
pelled man is a compelling man always. 
Some of the greatest evangelists of the 
world have not preached a word. Liv- 
ingstone during the days that Stanley 
was with him after that memorable 
search said not a word to his finder about 
religion, yet Stanley turned back home a 

78 



Compelled Men 

true disciple of Jesus Christ. It was 
impossible to live a day in the atmosphere 
of Livingstone without having one's 
whole life changed. The college mates 
of Henry Drummond called him "The 
Prince," for there was something about 
the man that compelled the title. John 
Watson — Ian Maclaren — declared that 
there was about him "an inherent quality 
of appearance and manner, of character 
and soul which marked him and made 
him solitary," and which sent men to him 
inquiring the way, as to Christ himself. 

There are men in whose atmosphere 
it is impossible to live and be small and 
mean and self-seeking. M'Cheyne of 
Scotland had about him what his con- 
temporaries called a "Jesus-like quality." 
God seemed to shine from his face as it 
shone from the face of Moses, and men 
would weep and give themselves to 
Christ at his mere invitation. 

Dwight L. Moody was an ignorant 
man, a poor man, a man who began life 
in as great obscurity as any man can, yet 
since Lincoln's day no man has been 



Compelled Men 

more loved in America, and since Spur- 
geon's day none in England. It has been 
estimated that he was in touch with one 
hundred millions of people and that he 
brought into the Kingdom of God over a 
hundred thousand souls. He was the 
most compelling man of his century, and 
the secret of it all was that he was the 
most compelled man of the century. He 
prayed night and day and with all his 
might, never for himself but always that 
God's way should come to pass. "If God 
should write/' he once said, " T). L. 
Moody, have your own way/ I'd take 
God's way every time, for it's a better 
way than mine." That was the secret 
of his compelling power. 

One does not have to be in a conspicu- 
ous place in order to be a compelling man. 
Prince Albert of England once said: 
"The man who embodies to me the most 
strongly the idea of integrity is a poor 
Highland gamekeeper. If I ever did a 
dishonorable action, I should not meet 
Davy's eye. He would know it." There's 
the secret. Live such a life that uncon- 



Compelled Men 

sciously you will compel all who come in 
contact with you. 

A tourist was once asked what had 
most impressed him at Oberammer- 
gau. "The conduct of the young woman 
who waited on our table where we 
lodged," was the reply. "It was Anna 
Fliiger, who took the part of Mary, the 
mother of Jesus," he went on to explain, 
"and though hers was the part that any 
young woman of her little world would 
have counted worthy of a life's ambition 
and the greatest honor that can come to 
one of them in ten years and but once to 
one, she was as simple and as unaffected 
as any one in the whole village. She 
served us at table on Sunday morning as 
if unconscious that in an hour she would 
be the heroine in that sublime drama. It 
was to us a revelation of the spirit of 
Christian service. Would not Mary the 
mother of Jesus have done the same? 
And was not Christ himself as one who 
served ? It moved me as nothing else did 
in that whole wonderful experience at 
Oberammergau, and it has helped me as 



Compelled Men 

nothing else to understand the true spirit 
of Christian service." Truly all of us 
can gain a lesson from a life like that. 

I know of an obscure instructor in a 
small college who has this power. He 
preaches not at all, and he gives no advice 
in public, but students when they meet 
him, automatically take the cigarettes 
from their mouths. He mingles much 
with all kinds of men but he never hears 
an oath or a vulgar allusion. Somehow 
that sort of thing is rebuked by his very 
presence. The word "aristocrat" once 
had a noble connotation. It came from 
the Greek word meaning "a ruler of the 
best." In this high meaning of the word 
even the peasant can be an aristocrat. 
There is a peerage of soul that is written 
in no blue book save in the records of 
Almighty God. This supreme nobility 
comes from a vision of life in its higher 
realities, a vision of self and the divinity 
of self, a vision of Jesus Christ. When 
one has seen these things he becomes a 
compelled man, and then inevitably a 
compeller of other men. He who can 



Compelled Men 

say, "The love of Jesus Christ compels 
me," will be sure also to say "without 
ceasing I have remembrance of thee in 
my prayers night and day" ; "necessity is 
laid upon me; yea, woe is unto me, if I 
preach not the gospel" ; I seek not "mine 
own profit, but the profit of many, that 
they may be saved." 

Rule 10. Live the compelling 
life. Think of your life never in 
terms of yourself, but always in 
terms of Jesus Christ and of service 
to men for him. Let your prayer 
be, "Lord Jesus, give me a vision of 
life and of thee, not that I may be 
enriched for my own profit, but that 
I may be enriched so as to flow over 
into the lives of other men. Show 
me my lifework; I ask only that it 
may be where the peculiar powers 
that thou hast given me may be used 
to their full to compel men into the 
life for thee." 



BOOKS THAT COMPEL 



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Call for Character 

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An appeal to use one's life for the highest purpose. 

How to Deal With Temptation 

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For those enlisted in the winning fight. 

Out of the Fog 

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"A book that the Christian world will not lose or 
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Second Mile 

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A book for the person determined to win. 

Jesus the Joyous Comrade 

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An inspiration to follow the leadership of Christ. 

God Incarnate 

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An address on the Deity of Jesus in which the author 
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